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SC Supporter

I'm finding the criticism of Skipp totally bizarre. I thought he did perfectly well yesterday, bordering on the impressively well.

His touch, his passing and his work rate are all very good for an 18 year. Sure, he needs to beef up a bit, but central midfield was, IMO, the best part of our game yesterday. He was a good part of that.

Well-Known Member

You seriously think Winks and Skipp is a viable CM partnership for us? Jesus. Say goodbye to CL football and any hopes of winning things. We'll slide back to mid table. We'd have one of the worst engine rooms in the league.

Winks hasn't been impressive as a lone DM, he's too lightweight. Fans need to realise the answer to our predicament, and to making the team stronger, does not sit within our academy.

An academy which IMO is incredibly over rated by our own fans. People think Winks is the second coming, I think he is a squad player nothing more and he is apparently the best we have to offer.

When you look at Chelsea and City, you have major european clubs making eight figure offers for their talent. Sancho, Hudson-Odoi. Some club in Europe made a 10 million quid offer for a kid at City I'd never even heard of yesterday. Do you see that happening at Spurs? do you see Bayern Munich and Dortmund trying to sign our kids?

The fact is, our kids are nowhere near good enough. One or two may make "dependable squad players" one day. Fantastic! Kane has made people deluded over our academy. He's a one off.

Well-Known Member

I'm finding the criticism of Skipp totally bizarre. I thought he did perfectly well yesterday, bordering on the impressively well.

His touch, his passing and his work rate are all very good for an 18 year. Sure, he needs to beef up a bit, but central midfield was, IMO, the best part of our game yesterday. He was a good part of that.

Well-Known Member

Winks was 20 when he started turning out regularly and performing the the level required to be a genuine alternative in our midfield, just for comparison. Skipp has a lot to learn, and enough time to do so. Judging him for what he is right now, I think his performance was decent enough to be optimistic.

Well-Known Member

He was awful today and has been bang average in most of his other appearances (did well against Tranmere).

He's physically tiny and whilst tenacious still gets run past and muscled off the ball very easily.

His passing his rarely progressive until it seems Poch tells him at half time, and he's got a poor pass completion rate.

He doesn't seem to have a defined role or style of play - at the moment he's a generic CM who passes sideways most of the time.

Now - before you all neg me into oblivion - the point is that all this is basically fine. He's an actual child. A kid bumped up from the academy and asked to play top-level men's football, and he's understandably not remotely ready. Most kids who do get exposed this early in their careers are physically already grown men (Hudson-Odoi or Rooney for example) which is why they're already a level above their peers in the youth setup.

There's nothing wrong with that, and given his weaknesses, he's done generally ok when he's played in terms of what we should expect.

In time, he might develop into an interesting player who would be capable of challenging for the Spurs first team squad. As it is at the moment, he's a kid who's way out of his depth and with no obvious "wonderkid" properties (physique, pace, skill, technique etc). Once our squad is no longer all in A&E or (God forbid) we actually buy a fucking CM, he'll be miles away from the squad again, and rightly so, giving him time to develop into the player he's capable of becoming.

But please, let's not indulge in this artificially-positive nonsense that he's actually been good beyond one appearance, or is anything other than a complete last resort for Poch. He is not a player we should be relying on at our level and he is not capable of providing anything like what we need from a CM.

Skipp had a hard day yesterday, but he is a very talented lad and is going to be a very good player, tell me you didn't look at the team sheet and honestly think we were not going to struggle, players playing who have just come back from injury and no creativity, without any of Lamela, Eriksen, Son, Kane, Ali its not going to be easy.

I think people need to get real and realise we have to bring through young players, its skipps first season his only 18, next season he will be stronger and better. Hudson has pace and is outwide it masks a lot of potential deficiencies in his game his def talent hence why with not much game time a 35 million bids come in

Well-Known Member

You seriously think Winks and Skipp is a viable CM partnership for us? Jesus. Say goodbye to CL football and any hopes of winning things. We'll slide back to mid table. We'd have one of the worst engine rooms in the league.

Winks hasn't been impressive as a lone DM, he's too lightweight. Fans need to realise the answer to our predicament, and to making the team stronger, does not sit within our academy.

An academy which IMO is incredibly over rated by our own fans. People think Winks is the second coming, I think he is a squad player nothing more and he is apparently the best we have to offer.

When you look at Chelsea and City, you have major european clubs making eight figure offers for their talent. Sancho, Hudson-Odoi. Some club in Europe made a 10 million quid offer for a kid at City I'd never even heard of yesterday. Do you see that happening at Spurs? do you see Bayern Munich and Dortmund trying to sign our kids?

The fact is, our kids are nowhere near good enough. One or two may make "dependable squad players" one day. Fantastic! Kane has made people deluded over our academy. He's a one off.

A hunter must hunt...

You seriously think Winks and Skipp is a viable CM partnership for us? Jesus. Say goodbye to CL football and any hopes of winning things. We'll slide back to mid table. We'd have one of the worst engine rooms in the league.

Winks hasn't been impressive as a lone DM, he's too lightweight. Fans need to realise the answer to our predicament, and to making the team stronger, does not sit within our academy.

An academy which IMO is incredibly over rated by our own fans. People think Winks is the second coming, I think he is a squad player nothing more and he is apparently the best we have to offer.

When you look at Chelsea and City, you have major european clubs making eight figure offers for their talent. Sancho, Hudson-Odoi. Some club in Europe made a 10 million quid offer for a kid at City I'd never even heard of yesterday. Do you see that happening at Spurs? do you see Bayern Munich and Dortmund trying to sign our kids?

The fact is, our kids are nowhere near good enough. One or two may make "dependable squad players" one day. Fantastic! Kane has made people deluded over our academy. He's a one off.

Active Member

Skipp is still developing & may grow physically quite a bit before he's 21.

My issue with Skipp from yesterday though is that there was too much sideways & backwards passing, especially in the 1st half & if he wants to develop into a Prem player he needs to improve on this. He looks to like a DM, but he has to be able to start moves as well & yesterday he took the safe option way too much.

A hunter must hunt...

Skipp is still developing & may grow physically quite a bit before he's 21.

My issue with Skipp from yesterday though is that there was too much sideways & backwards passing, especially in the 1st half & if he wants to develop into a Prem player he needs to improve on this. He looks to like a DM, but he has to be able to start moves as well & yesterday he took the safe option way too much.

Confidence may be a factor, but from what I've seen over the years truly good players have the confidence from to off, they say this is me, this is how I play & I'm good enough to play with you guys. I can accept a player like Skipp making mistakes if he's trying to do something positive, but to keep playing safe isn't suggesting he's anywhere near ready for the 1st team.

Fantastic Member

He's an 18 year old rookie finding his feet. It wont all be perfect, even on a good day he'll make some bad passes, bad choices, and get shown up a few times whilst he learns and adapts to the level and speed of the game.

So far he's looked competent enough and like he can hang at that level, even when he started in the PL. Yesterday was the first time he's experienced playing in a misfiring team and having very little help in the centre of the park. Shock horror, he struggled a bit more and there were more errors, but he didn't plummet depths beyond all the others. In fact, I thought he was superior to both Wanyama and Dier by quite a way. Now I know both of them are back from injury and trying to find rhythm, but so is Skipp adjusting to first team level. If he isn't to play for the rest of the season (as some are saying) based on yesterday, what about the other two? What about the rest of the team.......? He's way down the list of concerns, for me, on what we saw yesterday.

I see the 'he only passes backwards and sideways' stuff is being trotted out as well. That's called being a central midfielder in a possession-centric team (and also as a part of a Poch solid cm2). Modric, Xavi, Pirlo etc. would all have a fuck-tonne of safe simple passes in between the more cutting ones. If you haven't seen that Skipp (along with Winks before him with this argument.....) has the ability/vision to see and try to play a pass through the lines then obviously people don't watch games closely enough. For both it might need a slight recalibration as to deciding when to retain the ball, but I don't think that's an issue. Especially for someone finding his feet.

Ultimately he might make it with us, he might not. At this stage I don't really see much cause for concern, and instead a lot of promise. I suspect some of this is that those frustrated with lack of transfers see him as a symbol of it - and Poch choosing to give him chances instead of Mr 50 million pound new super signing - and so he is going to cop it whenever he is imperfect and/or we lose a game.

Active Member

Skipp has limited vision and passing ability, age won't change that, you are either talented or not. Dier will never be a modric, just like Skipp won't. If we rely on our youth players we will only go backwards

Well-Known Member

At the moment he looks OK. If you take your spurs blinkers off and he was playing for another club I wouldn’t look at him and think wow spurs have really found one here. Saying that I thought Tom davies was gonna be a star and he’s clearly not pushed on. Skipp is playing in a position he is likely to get better with age. It’s not like a sancho or Hudson odoi that are wingers and it’s all natural ability. As Skipp physically gets better it will help him. At worst he will be another Livermore at best scotty Parker. He wasn’t awful yesterday a bit below par I’d give him 6.5. If you want reference go look at first few pages of Kane thread 😂

SC Supporter

Here we go again.
18 yr. old
not as good as 33yr.old
best player in the world.
and likely never will be.
I don't remember many people
picking out Modric as an 18 yr. old.
In fact he was considered too lightweight
as he was by Spurs fans
when he first came at 23.

His positive passing yesterday
was mainly unsuccessful
but it was a feature of his game.

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